


our demons now

by stag_von_simp



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: !!!!!!!, (Spoilers Regarding Claude's Heritage), Angst, Argument?? Kind of, Banter, Bisexual Dimitri, Claude Evading His Feelings, Claude Keeping Secrets, Claude's Parents Are Buttholes, Claude-centric, Confessions, Dimiclaude Week 2020, Domestic Fluff, Dreams, Female Byleth, Fluff, Happy Dimitri, Happy Ending, Homesickness, Kissing, LEGIT hurt/comfort this time!!, Lots of Angst, M/M, Making Up, Mentions of Mature Situations, Nightmares, Not Direct Comfort Precisely But The Next Best Thing, Nothing explicit, Post-War, Reunion, Scars, They Have A Fight In Part Four, Touch, alcohol mention, coming clean, dance, descriptions, free - Freeform, hurt/some comfort, kings - Freeform, mentions of abuse, mentions of the blue lions, more nightmares, no beta we die like Glenn, physical fighting, sun - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22085128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stag_von_simp/pseuds/stag_von_simp
Summary: in which two men who have forgotten how to love teach each other, and learn the hard way themselves.or: my oneshots for dimiclaude week 2020!!--> day one: dreams--> day two: dance--> day three: sun--> day four: scars--> day five: touch--> day six: reunion--> day seven: kings--> day eight: free
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, Past Dimitri/Edelgard
Comments: 38
Kudos: 101





	1. day one

Since he started sharing a bed with Claude, Dimitri’s dreams have been glowing snippets of heaven. Dimitri has been permitted by any goddess who may be peering down to spend his nights wading through a flood of joyous possibilities, cozy what-ifs.

He’s so used to twitching in his sleep, jerking himself awake after a single hour with black fear spilled down his mind, bubbling and bleeding and  _ hissing  _ so all he can focus on is taming that feeling, taming the  _ fear _ , because it would be pointless to deny the memories of the phantoms their course to upturn his mind again and again.

Claude, however, makes it tolerable. Hell, the other man makes it quite nearly  _ okay. _

Of course, Dimitri feels something like guilt after every night of peace, feels a new weight nuzzling against his ribs, so harmless, in the long run, but so  _ huge  _ you can’t spook it into rearing away. Dimitri wakes to bruises within him, like invisible stars, so close to brimming over and spitting fire along the night sky.

So  _ close,  _ until Claude--ever the early riser, and ever dumping his covers behind in exchange for a beginning to his day’s work at the brink of dawn--saunters into the room, as if he can sense it when Dimitri needs him. As if Dimitri’s heart is a siren, throbbing and yelping, and Claude’s the devoted fighter of every flame that dares tease him.

Claude arrives into the room, prowls back to Dimitri, and pins him down with the sprawl of his own body, dusting his nose and cheeks with kisses like feathers, scrubbing all the guilt from his chest. And yes, Dimitri feels guiltier still that Claude decides to do this for him--blur into a stream of sunlight, dash over to chime and trill just for him, but then, Claude chimes with light whenever he breathes. 

There’s nothing wrong about embracing Claude for what he is: sculpted sunshine, pressing into whatever Dimitri could ask for like water churning under the prod of a stone on its silent surfaces.

So that’s what Dimitri does now--he  _ embraces  _ his sunshine. He wrangles Claude down, swiveling, searching for comfort and only finding it when Claude’s pasted down by Dimitri’s loving, gentle grip. And Dimitri splatters a mess of kisses across Claude’s face, only sinking into serenity when he finds Claude’s lips. Here, his own mouth chooses to loiter, his tongue roving to taste every inch of his husband. Today, the bitter slump of coffee, alongside something that stings, something  _ stronger _ , frosts across Dimitri’s tongue.

Hmm. Claude normally doesn’t drink coffee.

Dimitri chucks that observation over his shoulder like a sloppy letter, scrunched into a knot. He needn’t worry now; Claude’s here, isn’t he?

It’s like a reassurance, tingling in his ears, a song unsung, or a song looped through the air itself, breezing from nobody’s lips at all:  _ everything will be alright. _

_ Good dreams are acceptable, even for you. _

_ Good dreams are good omens, tunnels to the greatest of futures. _

Even a year ago, Dimitri would have scoffed at any of those thoughts, crowned with hope and its suffocation. But today, he nudges deeper into his kiss with Claude--his  _ husband, no way, his husband _ \--and lets himself believe in the greatest of futures.

Claude has tugged it down so Dimitri can reach it, this brilliant, beaming future. Now, all that’s left for Dimitri to do is accept it.

(And he’s starting to believe he can.)

***

Approximately two hours before Claude finds himself in Dimitri’s arms again, he’s in the kitchen, stirring the coffee in his mug into a howling whirlpool. His hands are quivering, ever so slightly. His stomach’s shuddering in tandem. It’s like his entire body’s swept up into a dance Claude’s never even heard of and certainly can’t match.

Claude blusters, then yanks his cup to his lips and crashes the rim of it against them, letting the coffee slope in, splash his tongue, swab his senses with its bitterness.

His hands continue their foolish tic, so he grounds the cup, thrusting it out of his way. He braids his fingers through each other, so both of his hands are interlocked in a stiff bundle, trying desperately to obey him. Claude, meanwhile, tries not to let himself be swallowed whole by the problem.

The  _ problem  _ being he can’t seem to spear the thought of the war from his mind.

Well, now he’s thinking about spears…

(Lances, blood, Dimitri’s clothes soaked and wrinkled, that seed of hollowness in the pit of Claude’s stomach branching out, clogging the entirety of every vein, every organ, as it stretches to torture him more every day. Blood. Dimitri trying to suck the lie from his voice while he claims he’s okay, now that the professor’s here, now that Claude’s here, but he’s not fine, and Claude’s not either, and he’s  _ so  _ not fine he can barely seethe his smiles and flap the fear off of him like a dog matted with water.)

(And then there was the blood.)

Claude’s vision has scattered, punched to pieces by the fear, which has become another person within him. 

Or maybe it’s Claude who’s become another person. He isn’t supposed to be afraid.

He’s been having nightmares. Flashbacks to the war. Wisps of the terror that curdled every drop of blood within him for five straight years, now six, and probably a century to come, if he weathers it for that long. 

He’d thought Dimitri, the absolute charm he is, would be able to scrape away this fear. No, he’d thought Dimitri would be the one to need his fear scraped away, and Claude could manage that. But he really, really can’t manage this.

Even admitting it aloud feels like a betrayal to Dimitri--who hadn’t married him to spend a life in a barren bed, lacking a husband who won’t just  _ face  _ this when he shouldn’t be facing it at all, because, if he’s honest (and he isn’t, but here’s the truth),  _ he doesn’t deserve the fear. _

Claude claws blindly for his cup, dunking down another swig of coffee in his rush to escape his mind.

Dimitri should be waking soon, he predicts. He should return to the room, smash his mask over his own pain, and give that man every ounce of love he’s earned.

But his mind’s still poking down every shaded path, still trundling along the sides of roads that cannot be paved. So Claude trails off to their pantry, his gait a  _ drip, drip, drip _ of shame, and he rummages through the contents (unfamilarly, his hands cautious, thinking,  _ this isn’t my home, Dimitri is. But Faerghus can never be my home,  _ and dappling himself with another round of sadness that he doesn’t need, because, great, now there are tears teetering in his eyes,  _ as if he’d ever set them loose _ ) until he finds a seasoned bottle of something with a poisonous level of alcohol within it, the glass smeared by dust, years, and, now, Claude’s sweat-traced fingertips.

He assumes it belonged to a parent of his husband’s, seeing as Dimitri doesn’t drink,  _ can’t _ . Claude should swear it off himself.

He pries the cork from the bottle--he’s not precisely sure what this fluid is, but it’s nearly transparent and sways like an ocean in a haze of storm whenever the bottle jolts--and gags down a sip, nearly choking on the way the sour rain of it cooks his throat.

Claude grimaces, lips hooked back and contorted, then pops the cork back on the bottle and forgets about it. He tromps back to the bedroom, but, a few steps before Dimitri can spot him and worry, he lifts the tromp back to the prance Dimitri needs.

When Claude flashes past the doorway, Dimitri’s just blinking awake.  _ Goddess, if you’re there or ever were, look how beautiful he is. My husband, the most cosmically beautiful human breathing in your air. Consider yourself lucky, too lucky. _

_ I do. _

Dimitri swings Claude back into bed. Claude tries to ignore the sprinkle of fear that freezes his gut. “How’d you sleep?” he puffs.

Dimitri drizzles a flurry of kisses across Claude’s cheeks, and Claude is convinced each kiss leaves its own freckle. Dimitri kisses like he’s rubbing his heart across your face. It’s the best kind of kiss. It’s just what Claude, in the silence that buzzes like a pulse through his head, needed.

Dimitri dabs a meaningful kiss to Claude’s lips, then arches out of it and grins. Claude’s heart begins to leak. “Very well, thanks to you,” his husband promises. “I swear, you’re like a guardian angel, keeping all my demons at bay. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Your demons are  _ our _ demons, now, baby.” Claude shucks out a single, painful laugh, then kisses Dimitri again as he chokes down the truth.

_ Your demons are  _ my _ demons, now, baby. All mine, and mine alone.  _

And his lips crest into a smile against Dimitri’s, because if Claude’s lugging all the pain, then that means there’s none left for this man he treasures so.


	2. day two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone!! just wanted to communicate that all eight of these drabbles will come after the game, with claude as dimitri's fellow king of the newly united fodlan!!
> 
> enjoy :)

Dimitri edges into Claude’s office, cautious to slide in with care; the last thing he wants to do is startle poor Claude, who’s bowing over whatever document he’s scrawling on with a revere that doesn’t quite suit him, with a focus that nudges Dimitri just enough off-kilter to feel his heart loll into a syncopated waver.

Dimitri clears his throat with a sound more like a whimper than a bark, and Claude whirls around to face him, relief sheeting down his face in a languid tumble. Even a smirk slants one side of his mouth; the bruises of exhaustion ever nestled beneath his eyes are much less visible when he’s grinning like this. “Finally, an excuse to stop working,” Claude chuckles, and Dimitri scoops him up tenderly. Claude wriggles back to stand on his own. “I’ve been waiting for you. How was it in that village you were visiting? Those kids have been fed, I presume?”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, “but all I did was chauffeur the food over. You’re the one who bloomed the idea in the first place. The children and their parents had as much gratitude to you as they did to me.”

_ So there’s no reason to be afraid of their judgement,  _ he would never dare to add. He could never let himself wobble so far out of the pin-straight line of decorum.  _ There’s no reason to hide behind your desk. _

_ A sunflower without the sun will wither as quickly as any other.  _

Of course, he doesn’t say any of that, because Claude’s chest smacks his own, and Claude swoops up for a kiss, lips practically glistening with desire.

The second Claude’s tongue grazes his, Dimitri’s mind sparks with the force of the best idea he’s had in years.

He breaches from the kiss, then slings his arms around Claude’s waist. “I’ve thought of something,” he says, a rejoice already strangling his tone, taut and perked with his desperation for Claude’s approval.

The glitter that trickles into Claude’s eyes confirms it; no matter what nonsense Dimitri suggests, Claude will agree. “What is it? Can’t be too crazy, this late in the evening.”

“It’s wonderful,” Dimitri assures him, but he only says it aloud to assure himself, even though he feels like he’s crashing toward something jarring. A scoff, perhaps. 

He’s not sure if he could handle a scoff from Claude, or anyone.

“I think so, anyway,” he amends, then plunges on, before the inhibition surging into his throat already can wedge in too cruelly. “I...I think we should have a ball.”

And Claude’s face flexes into that scoff, immediately. But Dimitri can, somehow, take it just fine.

The laugh that rumbles in Claude’s chest--still pressed right against Dimitri’s--feels like a comb of fingers, massaging the knots from his very blood. “That’s...not as bad as it could have been,” he decides, even if a squeak dangles in his voice, barely audible, unless you’re Dimitri--Dimitri, who obsesses over every nuance, who treasures every inflection, who stashes every word this man says away in his chest and prices each honey-slathered syllable over any pile of gold. “I mean, I’m not a fantastic dancer, but...you know what? A party is a party, and a party’s an excuse to spend a day messing around with you.”

“Claude--” A blush punches swiftly into Dimitri’s cheeks.

“No, I don’t mean  _ that  _ kind of messing around.” Claude brushes him off, nearly cackling. “Well, unless you want me to mean it in that way, in which case…”

“Claude! No,” Dimitri chides him, and another laugh rattles in Claude’s throat, and another shudder echoes within Dimitri’s bones. “It would be for the kingdom. And, more importantly than even that, it would be a reason for you to relax for once.”

“I’m always relaxed, when I’m with you.” Claude settles deeper into Dimitri’s embrace, forcing his stiff, stressed muscles to slouch as if to prove a point.

“You aren’t,” Dimitri rebukes. “You’re young enough, and you’ve been a king for not even a year, and it must be difficult. This place didn’t even need to be on your shoulders, darling. I just kind of thrust it upon you...”

“Oh, shush,” Claude purrs. “Look, we’re doing this ball thing. I don’t mind. It sounds like fun, especially with you. But you gotta remember I chose you as much as you chose me, baby. I knew what I was getting into with this king business--but it was kind of inevitable, wasn’t it? And I either got to do it here, with you...or back in Almyra, with some woman I didn’t know and couldn’t love properly. My decision was kind of made for me, by the circumstances.”

“You know,” mutters Dimitri, “I would have followed you to Almyra, if that’s what you wanted.”

For this comment, he earns another curl of Claude’s lips--a treat, really--another scoff. “I know that,” Claude says. “But I obviously didn’t want that. Fodlan needed you--needs you still, and, I mean, they’ve got me, too. Forever.” Dimitri feels his lips writhing with the force of his smile. “Now teach me how to dance better. Let’s steal the breath right from these ball people’s lungs.”

“It doesn’t need to be some sort of  _ scene, _ ” Dimitri points out, and Claude laughs. The sound buzzes in Dimitri’s chest, yet again, and his heart is shocked into overdrive by it.

“But it’s so much more fun if it is.”

It’s a comfort in itself to see Claude swaying back into his typical, lax rhythm--Dimitri’s heart slugs back to its typical, comfortable speed, only so at ease when he’s with Claude--so Dimitri finally relents to Claude’s wheedling; he’s pleading to begin the dance tutoring tonight. It’s foolish to even expect Dimitri to refuse him.

And Dimitri could let a memory thread through the euphoria as he and Claude glide across the floor--he could let  _ her  _ snake back under his skin, the way she used to splinter every thought just by existing, or having previously existed. He could let himself drown in the thought of the last time he’d taught someone he cherished to waltz.

He could let his joy be choked away by the thought of white hair, white skin, white snow shrouded around them. Or he could let himself be bathed in platinum moonlight, cleansed by this man with the silver tongue and golden iridescence.

For the first time since he met the white-haired ghost--for the first time since he’d loved her, and left her behind--he chooses the alternative.

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd chooses  _ joy.  _


	3. day three

“What’s the matter?” Dimitri’s voice, as always, snips through the cobwebs that drift into Claude’s mind so easily these days. Claude bounces his eyes back to Dimitri; seeing him should be enough to set off the joy already crackling in his ribs, yet it’s just a weak gurgle at best, at least right now. But it should be  _ more.  _ Claude should be clawing idly at his chest, wondering if his heart is about to fizzle out like an overwhelmed star. 

But all he can think about is the drowsy landscape dozing beyond the window.

All he can think is this: “The sun never shines here, does it?”

He loathes how the hollow yearning kneads into his voice, cushioning every word as if they’re precious enough to be treated delicately, when really, is word is a confession--and one to an irredeemable sin, one you save for when you’re stowed away in the safety of solitude and your own foolish beliefs.

A sigh rumbles out after the word; his throat has become an avalanche, and it’s devastating, because now Dimitri’s eyebrows are coiling, united into a knot of worry.

Claude can’t help it; he purges another sigh.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, then flinches his focus back to the desk sprawled before him, and the paper he’d been drafting before his thoughts shipped him so far away. “Back to work.”

“No,” Dimitri says. “You’re more important than that draft, starlight. What’s bothering you?”

_ Starlight.  _ Claude, even in this mood (the emotional equivalent to a humid day, where every breath swells with smoke and sweat, like the long days in Almyra he’d endured as a child), has to chuckle at the nickname.

“Nothin’,” except it’s not convincing, so he lunges for his second attempt and seizes it, perking up his tone with as much fake cheer as he can inject into it at once: “Nothing at all.”

“Something,” Dimitri bickers back. “Come on. You can talk to me.”

His voice makes the statement-- _ you can talk to me _ \--into an insistence, and it’s so adorably, innocently  _ wrong _ Claude has to laugh again.

(And something inside of him nags him for acting like this--acting like he can’t trust the most solid, loving vault in the world with his thoughts, but there’s a louder voice, bellowing threats. If he makes Dimitri worry for him,  _ he’ll get it,  _ the voice promises. Claude doesn’t know precisely what it is he’d be  _ getting,  _ but he doesn’t particularly care to find out.)

“I know,” Claude tells him,  _ lies  _ to him, because, ultimately, all the damned viper knows how to do is spit  _ lies _ in all directions. “And if there was something I needed to get off my chest, I would talk to you. Don’t doubt that, baby.”

“ _ Claude. _ ” 

“Dimitri. Your Princeliness.  _ Baby _ .” The suspicion that squeezes everything that isn’t frustrated concern from Dimitri’s face chops something within Claude in half; he’s talking again, like a fool, a second later. “What do you want from me? Seriously. Should I make up something to be wrong so you’ll stop bugging me, even though there couldn’t be less for me to be upset about? Look, Dimitri. I’m with you. I’m content. I’m over the moon. I’m jumping right over it, again and again. You make me so happy.”

“Oh yes, I’m convinced,” Dimitri snaps back, “that you’re happy when you’re  _ seething _ all of this at me.” A beat of silence throbs by. Claude’s chest grows tighter as the moments span by. When Dimitri speaks again, his voice is chipped away by the greedy jaws of wounded feelings. “Claude. You do know you can talk to me, right? Why are you so petulant? And what can I do to make you relax again?”

_ I’m tired,  _ Claude realizes, the thought decking him like a wall of bricks crumbling just to plow him down.  _ And there’s no sun in Faerghus. I can look and look--I can stare, I could carve through the clouds, I could brush all the snow aside--and there’s no sun.  _

_ But there was sun in Almyra. There is sun at home. _

Tears teeter on the cliffs of Claude’s eyelids. He rips clean through them, and scolds a grin onto his face. But it’s not a smile he’s wearing.

It’s a scar.

“Guess I’m just thinking a little bit,” Claude finally forfeits, but his voice is still. His voice is safely swathed within the nonchalance he’s gotten so skilled at faking. “And what about you? Something else ticking you off? You’re not usually all that demanding.”

“I’ve been worried about you, in all honesty.” And that’s one thing Claude adores about Dimitri;  _ in all honesty _ . If Dimitri were a book, he’d be impossible to close. And every word scrawled on his pages would be etched with perfect print, effortless for even a child to read. “You’ve been distant. Gazing out the window,  _ thinking.  _ Have...Have I upset you in some way?”

His tone is so  _ soft,  _ so pained and desperate, that Claude has to race to reply in time before his own heart begins to fissure. “Of course not,” he says. “You could never upset me, Dimitri. I was just...thinking, that’s all. I promise. We all know I think too much, that’s nothing new.”

“What are you thinking about?” Dimitri asks--a plea stirring into his tone.

“How there’s no sun here, like I said before. Is there, baby?” Uncertainty leaks into his tone, spoiling it. “Am I just not seeing it?” 

“There’s sunlight,” Dimitri eventually says, “if you’re willing to look for it.”

Claude snorts. “What does that even  _ mean _ ?”

“It makes sense if you’ve been here so long,” Dimitri defends himself--and finally, a smile traces his face, like the tentative fingers of a ghost. But it’s there, and it puts Claude nearly halfway at ease. “And if you’re so friendly with the dark as I am. Luckily, you aren’t--at least, I don’t  _ think  _ you are. I thank the Goddess for that every day, by the way.”

“Of course you do,” Claude retorts.

“Oh, enough mocking me. Just...think about what I said, alright? I know you’re used to the Alliance, which always has that perfect amount of sun for crops to flourish...and, um, Almyra, of course. What’s the climate like there?”

“Hot. Miserable. The sun never shuts up,” Claude clips out, because if he doesn’t keep his descriptions brief, he’ll doubtlessly drown in them. 

_ Almyra. Hot. Miserable. _

_ Beautiful. _

“Well, enough about that,” Claude says, wrestling to keep his voice taut and steady. 

“Should we begin working on this draft again?” Dimitri proposes.

“We could,” Claude blusters, then sidles out of his chair, sliding carefully onto Dimitri’s lap. Balancing his arms on Dimitri’s shoulders, weaving a net to cradle Dimitri’s neck with his fingers, Claude hikes up to plant a kiss on Dimitri’s lips. “Or we could do something much more interesting than that.”

“ _ There _ you are, dearest.” Dimitri’s voice is practically a sigh of relief, and it thumps against Claude’s cheeks in a swirl of crisp breath, warmed to perfection.

And Claude, right here, propped atop the lap of the man he loves, realizes the first truth he’s ever been excited to blurt out, which is precisely what he chooses to do the second it bursts into his mind:

“Dimitri, I think I’ve found the sun.”

“Oh, really, so soon? Where?”

Claude cackles; Dimitri should know exactly what he’s going to say. Despite that, he proclaims it like it’s revolutionary:

“Right here, in this room.”

Dimitri’s head slants to the side, confusion twisting his features into the cutest rumple to ever exist. Claude just says it--exactly what he’s thinking.

“It’s you, Dimitri. I think...I think you may be the sunshine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> claude "i see an emotion, i run in the other direction" von riegan is probably not sorry for his behavior, but i am XD
> 
> (everyone in the comments has been worrying about claude not communicating, and i know it isn't getting better yet, but it might!! eventually!! i promise there's a possibility :D)
> 
> also: thanks to everyone who has left kudos, or a comment. you guys are treasures, all of you!!


	4. day four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is...very, very angsty. just be warned.
> 
> and i'm sorry everyone, my monkey brain couldn't resist... :((

The truth is disappointing--Claude would dodge it, if he could. He’d barrel in the opposite direction and skid to his knees if he thought it would help him duck the spear of this truth, which, in his experience, is never anything but agony where it concerns him.

But here’s the truth, in its screaming, stinging glory: they have both been so battered with wounds, Dimitri and him, that there’s more scars than skin between them.

Dimitri’s scars are ghosts, apparitions, memories of wounds still smudged across his chest, no matter how many ways Claude toils to erase them. Sometimes they’re hallucinations catapulting him back into the waking world at two in the morning--though, thank the Goddess, that’s not as frequent as it once was.

Sometimes Claude can pick out Dimitri mumbling in his sleep, conferring with the voices in his head, and that may be the most traumatic thing Claude’s ever heard. He tends to rattle Dimitri awake if this happens, but Dimitri always swears he can’t recall dreaming of anything before slipping back into sleep.

And Claude only half believes this.

That’s his biggest, bloodiest scar, he thinks: he can only  _ half trust  _ the person he would stock the most faith in of anyone in the world.

More often than not, at this point, Claude is used to spending his nights sprawled but unsleeping, practically every inch of himself crushed to every inch of Dimitri, watching his husband’s face. It’s creepy, he knows, but it’s much easier than letting his eyes dribble lower down. Much easier than sinking into the jaws of the physical scars littered across Dimitri’s chest. Just looking at the forgotten wounds, scowling and gray, makes Claude’s stomach spin like a corkscrew.

Tonight, the exhaustion Claude’s on the road to befriending nips at his bones and his eyelids, feeding on his brain like a famished parasite. Tonight, Claude is comfortable enough, buried in the cords of Dimitri’s arms, roped with muscle and buzzing with warmth beneath the pale skin, to let sleep shutter his eyes shut, nearly sealing them down--

When Dimitri yelps beneath him, tossed by a sudden shiver. Claude bounces back to wakefulness, and Dimitri is twisting in his sleep, rolling as if to writhe away from the ghosts, the voices. The  _ scars. _

The truth snaps down on Claude’s shoulders anew--Claude, who fights into a sitting position, jostling Dimitri by the shoulders. Dimitri wakes a second later--maybe a second too late, because as he springs up against the pillows, sweat buds at his hairline. He’s panting.

“Claude,” he sighs, voice a plume of smoke, licked from the air the second it bleeds into it. “Claude. I-I-”

“You what?” Claude’s tone is slathered with too much truth, oozing with honey-thick concern, poisoned by confusion.

“I...thought I was…” Dimitri himself looks baffled, his eye chasing the shadows behind Claude’s back--his left eye does, anyway, scampering as if riffling for something without a hint of luck in finding it. His right eye socket--hollow, starving, _ gaping _ \--does nothing. He doesn’t wear the patch to sleep. “I thought I was...b-better,” he confesses, and tears shock into the left eye, zapping clean through anything else. 

“You  _ are _ better,” Claude assures him, scraping the hair from Dimitri’s forehead with his fingertips. “You can’t expect every last night to be perfect, baby, not when you’ve had nightmares and stuff every night for years.”

“Not about  _ this _ ,” Dimitri says. Claude’s eyebrow jumps. Dimitri sighs, squirming out of eye contact and glaring down at the rumpled blanket in a knot between them.

Somehow, the blanket feels more like a chasm, a boundary between what Claude understands and what he’ll accept.

He coughs, then claws a breath into his chest, even if the air itself scratches his throat raw. “About what?”

“Nothing, Claude, I--” A helpless squeak hatches from Dimitri’s mouth. He’s clearly trying to shred through the urge to cry, but he’s not quite so skilled at it as Claude.

Claude, whose stomach is suddenly bubbling with anger. He permits the feeling to fester, if it won’t just curdle like it should. He has  _ no right  _ to be anger, but he’s pissed, because Dimitri’s trying to sneak this past him. Dimitri’s trying to lie, and Claude’s been working  _ so hard  _ to trust him, but suddenly he’s not sure,  _ he’s not sure,  _ if it’s even worth the grueling effort.

“Dimitri,” he says, and it’s too late to clog it all down, so the slightest trickle of anger veins its way into his voice, and he’s suddenly aware of the fact that he loathes himself for ever doubting Dimitri, for even a second. Dimitri flinches at the roughness of Claude’s voice. “Look, it’s fine. It’s  _ fine.  _ Just...go back to sleep, okay? And forget this ever--”

“It was  _ her,  _ Claude,” Dimitri huffs. Guilt crawls through Claude’s every vessel. It  _ itches.  _ He wishes he could tear himself apart, just to keep the  _ itch _ of it at bay. “It was...E-El.”

Luckily, he no longer has to struggle with the guilt, because his stomach has been swiped right from his insides. Nothing exists but the shrill of his doubts in his brain. “Edelgard’s dead, Dimitri,” Claude reminds him, and he’s being harsh, but Dimitri can’t love a dead girl, he can’t cherish a box of bones more than he cherishes Claude, right?

_ Right _ ?

Claude needs to believe this, or else he may collapse.

“I know,” Dimitri says. “I  _ killed _ her, Claude. My...My...I’m not supposed to be dreaming of her. I-It...I mean...I’m supposed to hate her.”

Now, even the doubts fizzle out. There’s nothing left. Tension swarms in the air. The chasm between them strains itself, broadens, and Claude’s pulse jars him every time it beats.

“You... _ don’t _ hate her?” Claude eventually rasps. He has no right to be angry or astonished, but those are the only things he can feel, and they scuffle in his chest, gasping with rage. His lungs seem to be rebelling against him. He yanks a laugh from the vat of churning frustration his stomach has brewed into. “Y’know, most people don’t obsess over hacking the heads right off of their  _ favorite people _ .”

“No, Claude, I…” Dimitri is frozen, skin bending the light of the moon into daggers, firing them back at Claude so a thousand enter his chest at once. “I don’t...What is this? Are you--”

“No,” Claude grunts vaguely, then lunges to his feet. “You know what? I think it’s time I start the day. A bit of coffee, and I’ll get right to--”

Dimitri paws for his wrist with weak, quivering fingers. “Claude, you don’t think...Are you jealous of El?”

“No.  _ No.  _ No, Dimitri, I know...you wouldn’t…”  _ Would he? _

If Claude had been rational--if he’d slept for more than a few indulgent hours in the last few days, if he wasn’t foaming over with envy for a phantom, a floating memory who’s lingered too long but can’t last forever, because  _ nothing _ can last forever--he would know Dimitri’s feelings for Edelgard’s were that of a brother for his lost little sister, but he’s not rational, and he’s nauseous, and he’s weak. So he whips his wrist from Dimitri’s sweat-glazed grip and turns to the door of their bedroom. Dimitri wobbles to his feet, following Claude.

“Claude, I...you’re the only one for me,” Dimitri whimpers, ingenuity chipping any edge from his voice. There are tears smeared down one cheek--the other is untouched. Claude’s anger wanes, retreating, leaving him bereft of anything. “You know that, don’t you?”

_ Don’t you? _

He doesn’t.

_ Do I? _

_ I _

_ don’t. _

“Look, baby, I...You really should go back to sleep,” he settles to say. “I love you to death, okay? And I know that wording could’ve been better, but...I do, baby, I do. And I...j-just…” He falters, and Dimitri wrestles for his hand.

Claude gives it, but it doesn’t feel like a gift at all. It feels like a truce.

There shouldn’t be truces in matters that aren’t wars.

He and Dimitri aren’t having a  _ war _ .

_ Right? _

If he could summon the strength, Claude would have popped his own head from his shoulders in that exact moment. Dimitri’s lips are driving together, a collision of a thousand feelings devastating his face. He’s trying to plug back sobs.

He shouldn’t have to. That much is without question.

Claude herds Dimitri back to the bed, perching beside him as Dimitri slowly unravels. He has one massive hand curled, one huge column of knuckles smashed against his lips, but the sobs pump through his entire being, and Claude holds him. How could he not? There’s no anger left--no jealousy, though he suspects  _ that _ will loom back into existence in the morning, when he’s awake enough to fumble for it again (he doesn’t want to, but he will. He won’t mean to, but he  _ will _ ).

He wonders how in  _ hell  _ he can be so jealous of any emotion Dimitri has for someone who isn’t breathing anymore.

“Claude,” Dimitri hics, tugging his seams together with little to no success. “Claude, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...even  _ mentioned… _ ”

“You were in love with her. I get it, Dimitri. It’s not your fault for loving her, when she was all you had,” Claude babbles uselessly, trying to make his unruly mind concur. “And now you love me, but I’m not all you have, and that makes it better. I’m not mad.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. How could I stay mad at someone so cute as you?”

Dimitri plows out a breath, but can’t mold it into a laugh in time, so what Claude hears is the sob of a broken, drained man, wrung dry of anything but the scars. “I’m not…”

“Yes, you are. Shut up. It’s the truth. You’re adorable. Now go back to sleep.”

“In a minute,” stalls Dimitri, clasping his hand around the wrist of the other, cradling the sloppy bundle to his chest. “I have one final question.”

“Well?”

“You...You  _ were  _ mad, even if you say you weren’t. It was in your eyes. It was a living, breathing thing. W-Why? You..You know I’m not...I don’t feel that way...with El. Maybe I never did. And if I had those feelings, once, I don’t anymore. That capability kind of flies beyond your reach when you’re the one who kills the person.” Dimitri’s splash of a chuckle is slightly more convincing this time.

“Wait....What was the question?” Claude honestly missed it.

“Oh. Um. Why did your temper flare when I brought up El?”

Claude scrabbles for something reasonable, then chooses the faintest rumble of the most cryptic response, and it’s true, in a haunted, messy way:

“Everybody has their scars, baby.”


	5. day five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a note: this one's kind of a filler, setting up the events for tomorrow. the prompt isn't as laser-focused on as i wanted it to be, but...you know what??? here it is!!
> 
> also, warning--there's mentions of ~mature~ events. (read: there are sexy times hinted at pretty heavily, but i'm literally fourteen and was too much of a coward to write them. besides, i only know so much about that kind of stuff, so...yeah!! it's nasty, but it's definitely there)
> 
> ONE MORE THING!! i am a firm believer in the suckiness of claude's parents. if you disagree with that (even though they...let him be tormented by the other almyrans without stepping in, even if they had the power to squash every threat?? even though claude calls his mother a "demon queen"???) i'm sorry. but it's my fic, and i'm gonna zero in on this for a little bit!! (as in: it'll be a fairly big plot point for the rest of the week, especially tomorrow's prompt!!)

It’s  _ over _ .

The armistice has been signed, the treaties sheathed away in their files, piled onto the mound of ever-increasing avoided topics that perks its shoulders and rears its head. Hands have been shaken, but their grips have been flimsy and weak. Agreements and curt nods have flitted through their home for days.

The war is  _ over.  _ Claude has resolved to be unable to care less about Edelgard, even if she occasionally jerks in her slumber, ever curled in the corner of his mind, ever tugging the shadows of her blankets closer. And Dimitri has pleaded for forgiveness a million times, literally clasping his hands and slipping to his knees at one point, eye flashing with schools of tears.

So Claude forgives him, then stows the problem under the rug.

And lately, he’s been soothing his sorrows with a perfect remedy, and here’s the recipe: a dash of alcohol here, snatched in the desperation the cackling moon brings him so often these days; a decent swirl of suppression, gulping and crashing and gulping again because the truth upsets his poor, sweet,  _ beautiful  _ dearest; and the secret ingredient.

(This one, he’s not so keen on sharing. He needs to keep this one all to himself. He needs to cradle it to his chest, to fetter himself to  _ this  _ and to hack the hands from anyone who wanders a bit too close to them.

It’s Dimitri and his masterful hands, the cautious tread of his skillful fingers, the wilderness of his skin that Claude can never stop scrambling, the golden bake of his lips. It’s always Dimitri, isn’t it?)

Claude’s, honestly, petrified that they’re growing apart, as the crevice he’d felt  _ that night _ is stuffed with secrets, fed by confessions pocketed and admissions he dives to evade. So he hacks through this barrier with the only means he knows: by slamming his body to Dimitri’s whenever he can, in an attempt to smother the space between their minds to nothing.

He feels like, if this method of loving isn’t as efficient as it could be, is by far the most enjoyable. And Claude  _ loves  _ Dimitri, he really, really does. He can’t bear to choke out the words as often as he should, but they’re the gloss in every kiss he stamps to Dimitri’s lips. They’re the pinch in every nip he dares at Dimitri’s collarbone.

Dimitri may be lacking an eye--his vision may not be more than a stammer sometimes, when the ghosts peel away his ability to see through their haze, knit with pollution, knit with  _ pain _ \--but his sense of touch is  _ heavenly. _

No matter where the fluttering fingers choose to graze--no matter which inch of Claude they choose to probe, when they choose to at all, when he doesn’t pin the task on his lips or his words instead--it’s the sensation of prickling near-nervousness to be touched by them. There’s something so fleeting about them. Dimitri touches like he’s sculpting with glass.

It makes Claude feel like he’s someone to be scrubbed of fingerprints--someone to be cradled and fawned over, even if Dimitri fawns over practically everyone, just not  _ this way _ \--someone to be dusted clean of everything that isn’t pure. When they finish, every time, twisted up in each other, panting and groping for the composure they’d chucked aside in a bundle alongside their clothes...the feeling whispers right back into the  _ nothing _ it should be.

Claude remembers there is nothing pure about a vase if it’s brimming with poison. Dimitri may object, and, yes, Claude would allow him to, but he’d always feel the spike of an objection splintering his throat. He always will.

Dimitri, somehow, believes that things  _ can _ still be pure. He thinks there are things worth preserving. All Claude sees as worth the trouble is the glass-gleaming man who makes him feel  _ so special _ .

Usually, this realization will slam him in the base of the skull like a blow--the cynicism will return with a clatter, as it always must--and Claude will wilt into Dimitri’s chest, naked and shivering beneath the grimace of the moon’s judgement, falling asleep glued to the only heat he needs by a film of sweat.

And yet,  _ every single time  _ they go again, Dimitri can usher that mocking feeling of being  _ beautiful _ back into the room without so much as straining a finger. And without fail, Claude can startle it back to the shadows where it just  _ loves _ to tease him.

That doesn’t erase the enjoyment, though. One row with Dimitri, and there’s adrenaline screaming through his every sense for days. Dimitri is  _ remarkable  _ in bed.

Which isn’t to discredit his kisses, which are just as plush, just as tender and caring and cushioned with heed. And that’s not to discredit the heat that he can drape over Claude’s shoulders with the promptest squeeze of a hug.

But perhaps Claude’s favorite touch that Dimiri Alexandre Blaiddyd has graced him with is the way his eye slides down Claude’s stress-strung shoulders as the latter hunches over the letter that’s just been sent to their residence. Dimitri’s stare is tangible, dripping down Claude’s back like rainwater traipsing down a wall. He can feel the sag of its concern, the weight of it melding his iron spine to steel.

_ Dimitri cannot know of this letter. _

Claude hurls another secret into the growing tower of them.

“What’s the matter?” Dimitri asks, springing up from his desk with the energetic urgency of a boy half his stature. “You seem tense.”

Claude rips the furrow from his muscles, letting them slump back into place, even though his heart is rocking in his chest. “I’m not,” Claude lies. It occurs to him now, like the nudge of a knife to his throat, the threat before the teeth chew in, that maybe he lies a little  _ too  _ much--not that it changes much of anything.

_ It’s for Dimitri, after all. It’s to keep his touch feather-light. _

_ It’s to keep his heart from breaking under all that damn weight. _

_ You have to keep him weightless. _

“I’m not,” he says again, still pouring over the letter, thoughts screeching to a halt, as if he’d stomped on the brakes so hard they’ve shattered. “Just...there’s a conference coming up. I’ve gotta go, even though it’ll be a drag. You know I don’t do well with boredom.”

“Oh, yes, I...think you mentioned something of the sort,” Dimitri decides, as if he’s trying to stroke his own nerves into submission--even if he has to lie to himself to keep Claude’s own deceptions from digging in too deep. “That makes sense. And don’t be dramatic--you’ll weather through just fine. And then it can be you and me afterward.”

Claude doesn’t bounce so much as a glance over his shoulder to look at Dimitri, but the growl of desire that spills into his voice betrays his grin enough. Claude knows precisely what Dimitri’s implying, and normally his heart would well up with excitement at the prospect...but he can’t feel it. He can’t even force it, not as this letter glares up at him, wrinkled in his grip.

It’s going to be a  _ conference  _ all right. Just not one Dimitri would understand, and certainly not one that’ll be dull. Torture very rarely isn’t, after all. Agony cannot be mundane.

Claude slaps the letter onto his desk, lets it prune among the mess of all the other, less traumatic ones. A few hours pass. There’s work, and there’s kissing, and there’s the chucking aside and shirts and reservations, but this time, Claude doesn’t let his feelings dunk him into darkness after he and Dimitri are through. He lets his husband doze off--allows himself a moment to smile down at the man, blonde hair swept into a sweat-clumped halo, and Claude’s drowning in the expertise he’s blessed to witness so often all over again--then clambers back to their joined work room, and fishes the letter from his cacophony of a desk.

The words glint as they peer up at him, piercing through the darkness that colonizes the office at this hour, worming into every cavity that tunnels through Claude’s crescent of a heart:

_ Claude. _

_ I have heard of what is coming along in your new country. Your mother is just as disappointed as I am, and I will not force the poor woman to meet you and weep. _

_ So I will be meeting you.  _

_ I expect you to report to Almyra immediately. Do not disregard this, as you always have with my well-intended orders. _

_ Although, for this command, you have left me with no good intentions. _

_ And there will be no weeping from me. I can make no promises about you, however. _

_ Renegade. You, son of your begrudging father, are a renegade indeed. _

_ I shall straighten you out with my own hands, my own fists. I will do whatever it takes. _

_ Come home, fickle prince. Lest I report to you and your...fellow king instead. _

_ If it comes to such measures, you will be wishing you’d obeyed me damn well better than you ever have. _

When the formal tone drains from the letter--when the profanity drops in through the stiffness--Claude’s stomach drops with it.

Then, on a burst of rage, the letter is crushed into a ball. Claude spears it into his pocket, and chides himself into forgetting it. But then, Claude has never responded to chiding well, and stubbornly, his mind forges on.

_ Come on, then, Father. Come see what my angel can do to you. _

But the fear remains; it stoops over him, condescending as a king and his wife, wrestling with tears and tempers alike at the thought of their son’s success.

And Claude feels himself staggering to the stables to sling a saddle onto a horse.

If he gallops the whole way, he can get to Almyra by tomorrow evening.

He can make sure Dimitri never has to struggle with this. He’ll make it quick, he will.

_ For Dimitri. _

What a  _ conference _ it promises to be.


	6. day six

It takes Claude a full day longer to push past Fodlan’s Throat then he’d hoped it would, but, after the second sunset that’s trickled into Claude’s journey, cleaving through the dull rhythm of the of the voyage like blood from a wound. The sunsets--and the moon that trundles in its wake, the moon that beams down at him with all the joy of the sun, murmuring encouragements into his ears--are all that has kept everything from blinking into a drowsy fog, Claude included.

There have been at least a dozen occasions where he’d nearly drooped from his saddle. Not sleeping--spine steeled with bands of anxiety alone, bands that flex thinner with every hour that blusters by--can do that to you, even if you’re Claude.

And he was so convinced he was  _ accustomed  _ to it.

But, soon enough, he tears the mountains themselves from his way as simply as he would curtains, and there Almyra is, studded with starlight and life.

Now it’s a matter of reaching the castle before his consciousness loses grip of its rearing, ragged faith in him. He’ll make it; he has no other choice, and so he does.

The castle is the same fortress it always was; it remains as sneering, as towering and pompous as he remembers. It glowers down at him, as though the glazed panes lodged into the walls as windows are a thousand pairs of narrowed eyes.

Now, here’s the kicker, the golden crown to cap this splendid odyssey of his: he doesn’t know where precisely he’s to be scouting out his father.

Claude’s legs nestle deeper around the horse’s sides, although now he feels like he’s perched on a ledge instead of a saddle...teetering...pinwheeling his arms to keep the ground as distant as it should be...locking, then sagging in defeat, when the shadows reach him anyway.

Fear like rust, ringing around his joints, twining and  _ twisting _ . 

The ledge may not be there, but the fear squeezes in close to every bone, and it, at least, is very, very real.

Claude suddenly wants nothing more than to feel Dimitri’s arms winding around him like these ribbons of fear, but stitched with fibers of fire instead of ice. He wants to watch the cerulean flames rasp in Dimitri’s eyes--muffled by the ghosts, but still so there, as real as terror. He wants to squash the flames that parch Dimitri’s lips with the nozzle of his own--

“I expected you,” says a voice--no, _wracks_ a voice, beyond the limelight of his eyes, “to at least show up astride a wyvern. Damn. Fodlan really _has_ sucked the spirit right outta you, hasn’t it? A horse, Claude? A horse like every noble has. Like every other _tragic_ _prince_.”

The owner of this voice can be identified without searing his eyes with the effort of a glance, so Claude chooses not to. He doesn’t want to feel his vision dripping down his face, alongside his determination, blended in with the secrets and sadness he stows within. 

_ He can’t face him _ .

Claude nails his gaze to a star surveying him from the sky and speaks.

“Well met, Father.”

His father’s reply tolls as a bellow, and he doesn’t even raise his voice.

“Whatever you say, kid.”

***

Their meeting is a lot of things--terrorizing, intrusive, unsteady, spiking and lulling like anything else. His father’s temper yaps, squabbles with its metal-looped leash...then his voice will dim just enough to allow Claude a scrape of a glance at him, eyes bleary with the fear they veil. But it is certainly not a  _ heartwarming reunion _ .

Maybe Claude would  _ like _ his heart to remain unmoved. Maybe then he can scamper back to Fodlan, return to the pocket of Dimitri and his arms and his warmth without feeling as though he’s cowering from someone. If he can see this through without his emotions so much as stammering to be heard, then it would be a choice. Fodlan could be a home, instead of a haven he can’t help but feel is temporary.

Luckily, Claude’s father doesn’t even force him from his horse’s back. Apparently, he means to keep this interaction terse, all formalities chewed from the discussion. All expressions of love strictly filed away, left to loiter, left to  _ rot. _

If they’re anywhere at all, that is.

But that’s just Claude’s father for you. When Claude was younger, his mother would explain to him, fingers fanned over her lips, swooning, that he was “taciturn.” The demon queen was never a particularly affectionate woman herself, but Claude’s father could coax a different beast entirely out of her without even wasting a cocked brow’s worth of effort.

(Almost like how Claude is with Dimitri. That makes him nervous.)

(Because his parents loved each other dearly--coddled and cooed and ducked into corners just to snatch a kiss. But it left them with no love left to lend to anyone else.)

(Claude does not want to end up like that.)

The discussion begins with,  _ of course,  _ a nudge: Claude’s father gruffs at him for tapping out of focus so soon. It leaves Claude’s mind staggering.

And Claude has no time to acknowledge every other wisp of a thought, even as they devastate his brain. All he can do is wrestle with his caked throat to work as father and son gibber through the first chat they’ve had in over half a decade:

“Claude. You’ve grown since we’ve last been, haven’t you?”

(Spoken with the carelessness of a child with a pen and a vision. As if he expects Claude to be the same boy of toothpicks and skin never not flowering with a garden of bruises that he always was. He’s already slitting his eyes against the urge to roll them.)

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve definitely learned a lot of stuff in Fodlan.”

“I guess. Apparently, someone taught you to be a traitor. Must’ve taught you well.”

“No. I didn’t need to be taught to leave you behind, obviously. Just had to upturn a bit of courage is all. Wasn’t too hard, promise.”

(Except it was. So now even Claude’s promises are needled and tweaked, the threads pricked with his need to lie about everything. He’s not surprised.)

“Good. I’m  _ glad _ you didn’t suffer too much with your mother’s grief after you ran off.”

(Ran off, like he’d ventured into the woods that frame Almyra’s hems, only to forge free in time for dinner. As if it had been a joke.)

He can’t help it; his next words are spat with a wince and a starburst of sourness spraying the base of his throat. “She couldn’t care less. If she’d cared, she would have done something to prevent it. She would’ve kept her sweet little boy safe.”

“Don’t talk of your mother that way.”

Silence spills over them like a thick sheet of rain, gulping down every ounce of oxygen Claude could dare beg for. Not that he begs. Not ever. Not to  _ this  _ man.

“We’re here to talk about you, Claude.”

Nausea kneads within Claude’s stomach,  _ closer _ , closer to frothing free than he would ever let it be. He suddenly feels very lost.

He fishes in the pocket of his coat for a moment, then wrangles his fingers around the flask he’d been clever enough to load and lug. He pops his head back, tips the rim of the flask against his mouth. Claude’s father splutters, but Claude revels in the sensation of the drink as it blisters his senses, oozing over his tongue to wreak its havoc. He steals another swig, pretends the lip of the drink is the lip of his husband. Pretends Dimitri is here.

Pretends he has the guts to plow on with this.

“You know what? I think we should talk about you.”

His father’s head drifts to the side. Claude refuses to be reminded of Dimitri--leaning beneath the weight of his confusion before Claude wafted it away, confessing that, these days, Dimitri is his sunlight. His mind needs to stop its spinning, lest it spirals itself right off that ledge.

“What is there to say about me?”

_ Too easy.  _ Claude hates questions so simple, so thoughtless.

His truth trips from his tongue, but it is not wobbling. It’s diving, poised to take the fall with swift, fearless form. It’s taking this mistake and massaging it of its creases. It’s making it something worth running with, just like the winds of Fodlan that he’s grown to love.

“Well, you called me here to verbally whoop my ass about Dimitri, and ruling Fodlan instead of this place. Your letter kind of sang that out. You weren’t being  _ subtle.  _ But before the whooping begins...I think you should maybe hear me out.”  _ If you can stand to. _

His father hacks on an  _ ugh,  _ and Claude nearly laughs. It’s ridiculous--the alcohol sips the stress right from his marrow, and now there’s only yawning emptiness and exhaustion with the claws clipped off and a wanting for Dimitri that still cuts deep and always will--and this. Is.  _ Ridiculous _ . 

He continues this trend. He says what he’s thinking, and it’s the equivalent to sprouting wings and feeling the breeze ruffle them for the first time. It’s not liberating. 

It’s liberty itself.

“Where do I begin?” Claude’s genuinely at a loss-- _ there’s so much to say.  _ “Hmm. Let’s start with the fact that you knew full well I was getting messed with by everyone here a million times a day, and you did nothing. You let it happen. I still have scars, y’know. And Dimitri...he keeps me safe. He keeps me  _ happy _ , not to mention. Me, happy? I didn’t believe it was possible ‘til I met him, thanks to you. So, uh...My choice wasn’t a hard one.”

Claude von Riegan is not a coward.

But the king of Almyra is not a listener, and he cares not for courage.

“So you think you can betray your home, then? For a filthy  _ man _ ? There’s so much left to do here, and who knows when I die? If...If I had anyone else to pass it on to, I would. I don’t want some confused little renegade runnin’ my kingdom. But someone has to. And you’re all we have, even if we need more.”

The wings are sliced right off his back. The wind retreats. Claude’s courage fizzles out, fast and pointless as a keeling star.

He gasps down another mouthful of his drink, but the alcohol has been shaved down to the sting, and the sting alone.

And his father continues, and  _ everything  _ is suddenly very, very wrong:

“Don’t be stupid. Stop  _ lying _ to yourself, kid. We here heard plenty of your little war. Your man is a  _ psycho _ , nothing more--and you’re worse. You’re a disgusting little liar. You’re a  _ traitor _ .”

“Yet when dear old Mom left Fodlan, it flipped your switch just right.”

“She was leaving the dump behind. You became one of its rats. You’re running with the worst of ‘em--setting yourself up for a nasty break, I reckon. And when you need to run back here...the gates’ll be sealed as shut as they can be.”

Claude’s mind lurches; color spurts into his cheeks.

“You don’t know Fodlan! You don’t know Dimitri, or anything! And I’m never coming back.  _ Never. _ I don’t need to get cozy in  _ Hell  _ before my time comes.”

As Claude’s emotions howl, his father’s do, too. Claude watches as stumps of fingers, bulky and veined with meat, claw at the belt his father always wears, where an ax dangles down, ready to be lifted and utilized.

Claude’s vision is splattered red. His breath rattles in his lungs, limp,  _ useless. _

He suddenly,  _ desperately  _ needs to feel his feet clap the ground. He very well may tumble from his horse’s back, which he’s still buckled to by his  _ fear _ .

“I know enough,” grunts his father--no, the  _ king _ , because Claude refuses to own this man as anything, let alone the one who churned him to life. “I know they’re blind and barbaric over there. I’m just trying to keep my boy safe--”

But he says it as a snarl. Claude’s heart hammers.

He flings himself to his feet, stabs a finger to the king’s chest, tears swarming in his eyes, each with its own damn pulse. He scrunches his entire face against them, and they drag themselves back into his brain, thank the Goddess he doesn’t believe in. “You don’t give a damn about  _ your boy _ .”

“Someone has to be the heir,” his father says, breath pummeling Claude’s cheeks. Shivers from the heat slither down Claude’s spine.

There’s a moment of silence--strangling him, slamming the air right from his chest, if there’s been any air there for years--and there’s no such thing as liberty when the air reeks so much of smoke-stained breath and rage.

“Not me.” Claude doesn’t feel the words in his throat, but here they are, scorching holes into the air. His voice is barely a squeak. “I’m not  _ yours.  _ Dimitri’s the only one--”

His father’s fist booms against his face. Claude teeters...pinwheels his arms...screams, only to be choked off...and plummets. 

The shadows do not cradle him. They wriggle him mercilessly, jostling him as though he’s a doll of no worth, and he must be,  _ he must be _ . His neck nearly snaps, his bones crunching in the jaws of a thousand different feelings.

He vows to never be honest again.

“ _ Don’t come back _ ,” his father rips from his throat, then abandons Claude to his stifling shadows and worse-yet thoughts.

Claude wrenches himself to his feet--his every limb trembles something mad--he hauls himself back onto his horse’s back. 

_ He’s made his choice. _

He swerves his horse in the other direction, and ignores the river of red that frays like weak ropes from the corner of his mouth.

It’s time to get back to Fodlan.


	7. day seven

He knows  _ two kings. _

Claude sails home with a mouthful of scorching blood not even the alcohol can cleanly punch through, a clump of salt to stem each sense, and the wind chasing him in every step his horse conquers. The poor animal is exhausted, yet it’s able to clip half a day’s worth of time from the journey home--dipping through the mountain range with refined footfalls that barely dent the earth they scour, blazing through the plains of the former Alliance without any heed to wrangle against its progress.

If Claude’s entire being wasn’t shuddering with a throb of heart and jaw alike, maybe he’d be grateful. But he won’t be able to feel anything until he’s back with Dimitri.

(Back with that man who can wring the pain from his bones with a single embrace. He’ll be basking against that body in plenty of time--he just needs to hash through this pain--yet a pair of tiny fangs nibbles at the back of his brain, chewing through the lies as they dissolve like tears, slow and dangerous in their surrender--and Claude knows, if it were up to him, he’d never bask in anything. He’d just shrivel in his corners, slump to the shouts of his secrets, like a flower in the rain when the clouds choose to brawl. He’d keep it all stuffed inside.

He knows he will. He’ll see Dimitri, fork forth a peck of a kiss and a prod of a quip and he’ll hide. His seams will splinter, and he’ll hide.)

Claude is back to the castle before he’s been able to gag on an idea for a joke about a dull meeting. He’s been scuffing his knuckles against his lips for hours, even prying his fingers from the reins to do it in his desperation to tuck the blood under his tongue. The blood is his father, and the blood is his truth. 

_ Dimitri cannot learn of this. _

Claude coaxes his hobbling horse back into its stall in the stables. Immediately, its eyelids shade down, its muscles unfurling beneath its glossy sheen; the poor animal has already begun dozing. Claude is about ready for a nap himself.

He scrubs his knuckles over his lips one last time, then shakes all the tremors from his bones, herding them to their corners where they can huddle and confer and stake battle after battle, without making him stake  _ anything _ aloud.

He tries not to let his father’s murmured roar filter into his mind. He stacks his defenses, wrestles with his spine, arches his shoulders, and  _ breathes. _

It’s difficult, past the smog of the saltiness still loitering in his throat, like a memory. Like a  _ ghost.  _

But he cannot afford to be haunted, not right now. Right now, he must shrug into the castle and shrug  _ off  _ the phantoms. His job is to claw the cobwebs from the walls for his Dimitri. His job is to suck down the ghosts, wash them away in the writhing oceans of himself.

Claude--without needing to--patters his knuckles against the door. From inside the castle (so much like his father’s, because Claude is  _ no better.  _ His tongue flicks up to dab at the corner of his mouth. It blanches back, folding away from the blood it collects.  _ Shit. _ ) he hears a whoop, drizzled with joy that makes his own heart surge. 

_ He can do this. He has to do this. He has to do this right. _

With every chant of the mantra, Claude’s heart bumps down another notch. All excitement within him frosts his bones, then melts beneath the wince of sunlight, bleached white by the atmosphere and the snow, because  _ the sun never shines here  _ and damn, what if Claude made the wrong choice? Dear  _ Sothis,  _ if you’re there, flash me a  _ sign _ \--

There’s a rustle of mumbling from the obscure side of the door, then Dimitri’s ambling over, Dimitri’s wrenching it open, and everything glitches before Claude, everything splutters, and he’s  _ nervous _ \--

Dimitri is not donning his eyepatch; however, dawn splits across his face, easy and satisfying as a rip of fabric beneath strong fingers.

And Claude remembers, he knows  _ two  _ kings. The one with the crown of knuckles, and the one with the halo of hope.

Here, hope gapes for him, jaw unhinged and dangling. Hope spools his great arms, braided by muscle and flaming comfort, around Claude. He is scooped up, now, pinned to the span of hope’s chest, being carried into his home as though he’s a hero, when, in reality, it’s  _ hope _ who is the hero. It’s the sun who thaws the earth, who saves him from his gold-barred cage with the force of a smile and a hug. It’s Dimitri who is the hero.

“Dedue’s here,” Dimitri murmurs against the curve of Claude’s ear.

Claude quivers with a laugh, and with a thousand repressed things choosing to jingle at once. He can tell Dimitri, he can  _ trust  _ Dimitri, if he’s feeling ardent enough to try.

Still, he gulps it down. He chokes it all down, until his chest may fly apart in pieces.

“Perfect,” he sighs against Dimitri’s hair. “I’d be more surprised if Dedue  _ wasn’t  _ here. Good. Great. I’m glad you weren’t alone. Good.” Every word is a chore to speak. Claude’s torn apart by the urge to  _ talk to Dimitri,  _ but for now, he’ll just talk.

He is not ardent enough to try, it seems.

“You’re good, you’re great, you’re perfect,” Dimitri tells him, then hefts him to the kitchen, where Dedue is slaving by the stove. A kettle shivers, tea sloshing in its depths.

“Yeah? Well, you’re too damn much,” Claude retorts, and Dimitri snorts, then finally--Claude’s been kind of dreading this, his lips could betray him, they could spill  _ everything  _ with just a brush against Dimitri’s own--leaps into his kiss.

Claude’s legs wind around Dimitri’s hips, arms propped on his shoulders, and his thoughts momentarily delve into smoke.  _ Everything _ is smoke--everything is  _ trivial,  _ everything is  _ dull _ \--when one is boiling gold against the face of the sun.

Dimitri hunches out of the kiss. His brows clink together, nearly audible in Claude’s head, which has resumed its gossip, its mocking, its  _ screaming.  _ The  _ world _ is screaming. Claude’s skin is ridged with gooseflesh now. Dimitri has him figured out.

“That’s not a pleasant face,” Claude notices, but his voice is shackled with constricting, choking fear.

“Claude,” Dimitri responds, his tone cautious, a creep of a voice, “you taste like blood.”

(And Claude promises a thousand times that he tries to twist his tone into a dubious chuckle, tries to drain it of the pain, but the tears wedge in too far, like jewels trapped in stone, too tired to wriggle loose. And he’s tired, too. He’s alarmingly tired.)

“Unless I’m imagining things, of course,” and Dimitri slams a laugh into his own words, so fake, and Claude’s head blares, and Dedue snaps a glance over his shoulder, and Claude is tired. “I have been known to do that,” except Dimitri’s voice is now a burble, a trek of something too far underwater that should  _ not be _ underwater. Or maybe it’s Claude who is drowning. “Wait. This is serious, isn’t it?” It’s not a question. Claude squeaks, and he knows two kings, his father and Dimitri, hell and heaven, but sometimes hell and heaven are just a blur, blended like charcoal into a smudge of static gray, and Claude doesn’t know anybody except the little someone drumming this tinny, sudden snare of pain upon his teeth. “Claude. Claude.”

“Baby,” Claude whimpers, and everything screeches to a halt. His thoughts stop their quarrel, the rhythm bashes to its end. Dimitri doesn’t blink, and Claude wilts, burying himself and everything he tried so hard to keep inside in the shoulder of his husband. “Baby, I-I-”

Silence.

“I  _ lied _ . I lied a  _ thousand times. _ ”

A bass line of thuds. Dedue has dismissed himself. Dimitri has gone a bit limp, while Claude nestles deeper into his shoulder and wards against this overwhelming urge to cry. 

Eventually, Dimitri speaks--no, he gurgles, “What?”

“It wasn’t a meeting. N-Not like I said,” Claude gasps. His voice is fissured through, the sadness, the  _ agony  _ pooling in between each crack in these shattered words of a shattered, pathetic man. “Baby, I...I was meeting...my father.”

And then the dam crumples--the fog scatters--the defenses slap the ground, penetrated by the peppering of a million projectiles flung forth at once.

And then Claude is  _ losing his shit  _ in Dimitri’s arms.  _ Losing his shit,  _ actually, is weaving it poetically.

Puddles soil the shirt at Dimitri’s shoulder; Claude’s cheeks are pruning, his eyes are fountains, his throat searing for him to stop, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

“I’m not mad,” Dimitri says--Dimitri  _ swears _ , but Claude’s bones don’t stop their chattering. He’s not sure they ever will. “I’m not. I’m...I’m sorry, Claude, so sorry. W-What happened?”

Claude dissects the reunion, only carving out the details he must between desperate, squelching sobs. His lungs are pouncing, battering his ribs, begging for a sip of oxygen that Claude cannot afford to give. Dimitri cradles him and doesn’t dare shovel up a word.

“I’m s-sorry,” Claude warbles, and Dimitri mops a hand through Claude’s hair, freeing the tendrils from his forehead, sponged with sweat.

“Shush with that, my love,” Dimitri says. “You deserve this. I know...I  _ knew  _ there was something amiss, Claude. And...And you’re allowed to tell me these things.”

“This isn’t what’s been amiss,” Claude feels himself huffing, the  _ idiot _ .

Dimitri doesn’t shove him to continue speaking; he doesn’t even risk a nudge. Dimitri will never goad, but Claude tells him anyway. 

Claude. Tells. Him.  _ Everything _ . And Dimitri weathers the storm with a soldier’s stretched posture, a lover’s caress, a hero’s refusal to flinch. He flares beneath Claude, a puncture through the night. Dawn’s first dauntless spear. The day’s first flicker. 

He keeps Claude plastered together, even as his skin stings, as his edges curl and spring and  _ break.  _ The exhaustion clamps down on his shoulders, and Dimitri’s the one who has to hoist him to their bedroom. Claude’s grappling with so much he can’t balance on his own feet.

This wound, it festers where the needle can’t reach, can’t twitch the tear back together. Nothing can.

Dimitri tracks kisses down Claude’s body. Forehead, nose, a nip for each cheek, an anthem for his lips. Every drop of blood that remains is wiped smoothly away by Dimitri, and Claude realizes, tipping back against the mattress as Dimitri pads his lips against Claude’s throat, that  _ this  _ is healing. He should have let it happen years ago.

There are still tears on his face. There are still nicks littered beneath his skin, a million papercuts salting every inch of him, a million wounds that only chastise when they’ve been ignored for too long.

And there are  _ still _ two kings. There is his father. There will always be his father, lurking somewhere on the hem of his mind, blighting his brain with every stampede of a step.

A few kisses, even from Dimitri, cannot pluck a thousand knives from Claude’s chest. A few kisses cannot trace every wound in reassurance. A few kisses can’t pour enough magic into his mouth to bathe every scar away.

But someday, a few kisses and a few stumbling honesties may be enough.

Besides, there  _ are _ two kings.

There is his father, with his arsenal chained weakly closed, always slit open just enough to pose a threat...always a seduction for what may have been. There is his father, glaring and loitering and staining every thought he taps.

Then, there is also Dimitri. 

_ Dimitri _ .

There is Dimitri, with his smiles and his sunlight and his halo. With his emptiness that will never be crammed fully, never be stocked as fully as he deserves. With his single eye and his countless flames. With his words and his pink-draped cheekbones.

With his soft glow, his perfect shimmer. With that breathtaking night sky that knots beneath his skin in ribbons, billowing in a wind that isn’t there and doesn’t need to be.

There is Dimitri, who defines hope, who transcends temptation.

There is Dimitri, who knits the world back together with a single wink of his sunshine.

And, Claude reasons as his consciousness trails, he may know two kings, but there is only one who matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *uses the prompt word approximately three (3) times during the fic*  
> me: ah, yes, this definitely counts for the prompt of the day...
> 
> (okay, but this has been my plan from the BEGINNING!! and it needed to happen. and i hope you're all as happy it did as i am)


	8. day eight

A year skitters by, leaking between Claude’s fingers like sand that can’t be clamped--sand that will always choose to stalk the winds. Claude would not stop it in its journey; before, he’d been one to follow the breeze himself, to sigh when it sighed, to whoop as it whirred. Before, he’d chosen to be a victim to the circumstances he found himself held captive by.

Now, he chooses to be guided by the sun instead.  _ His  _ sun.

And it turns out there’s light chiming in every corner of Faerghus--of  _ Fodlan _ . It’s not the harsh, snarling lights he will always associate with bruises and chidings and  _ home,  _ if it ever served that purpose for him. It’s a softer glow, the type of light that will only reveal itself if you’re not digging for it. It will shed its cloaks and grin up at you as long as you don’t need it.

As long as you have your own sun-sparked torch to keep your path framed and visible, and now, Claude does. He has  _ Dimitri _ , and now, he has Ashe, and Mercedes, and Sylvain, and Annette, and Ingrid, and even Felix, casting spotlights in unlikely places, ripping through yet another layer of despair that had steamed across Claude’s perspective for so long.

And that’s not even mentioning Dedue, who, the day after  _ that event _ , the last time Claude’s faced his father, hastened to visit them in the morning and demand to know, in a more assertive tone than Claude had ever heard him employ, what had happened, and--more importantly,  _ so much more importantly,  _ somehow--if Claude was alright.

He hadn’t been. Maybe he still isn’t.

But he will be. He has his torch now, and he’s gripping on with all of his might. He will not topple from the same flimsy tightropes again.

Dimitri keeps their fingers woven, chained, even. Dimiri has barely let Claude skirt from his sight for the past twelve months. 

Claude has addressed the common folk himself, now. He’d finally scrounged the courage to display his face of mixed colors and tangled threads of inheritance, for all to mock.

All the people he’d seen cheered, and they didn’t nock any insults, let alone fire them his way. The only thing they ever hurled at all was praise.

Fodlan is not perfect, not yet. The Church is still planted on quaking ground, like a child bobbing on the surface of the sea, not quite ready to be tugged under despite the ever-looming threat, darting by in every shadow. The Empire’s most loyal former subjects are stirring up riots, though these protests can be squashed with ease, without being hassled, since the two kings of the country handle everything with ripe words, plucked with care.

Oh, and  _ Teach  _ has visited.  _ Teach _ , who had waded from the war with a thousand plans still hatching in that head of hers every day.  _ Teach,  _ who had been jammed somewhere between past and present, after everything she’d weathered. Everything she’d  _ watched. _

Claude can relate perhaps too well, but, when Teach had dropped by--explaining in her succinct way of explaining  _ everything _ that she’d wound up near the castle on her journey to defeat every threat that slithered in Fodlan’s most murky waters, most scowling shadows, and decided to pay a long-overdue she’d been the same as ever, and just seeing her had been like a massage pinching the stress from Claude’s very bloodstream.

Dimitri had been thrilled. So utterly thrilled. There’d been tears spilling down one cheek like unfastened lace, unbound and  _ free _ , and he’d been laughing as he clutched the professor and let his memories of everything they’d seen together swim through his head.

(Dimitri had also suffered the worst nightmare he’d had in years that night, after Teach swung by, but Claude had been there to rock him, and hum, and pamper him as he’d earned a million times.)

Their marriage isn’t  _ perfect.  _ But nothing is perfect--save for, maybe, Dimitri’s smile.

Claude can’t bargain for anything else, and he won’t. He has Dimitri--who has been tutoring him in honesty, of course. Claude’s always been something of a brilliant student (if he  _ does  _ say so himself), but he can’t quite wrestle a grip on  _ this _ as he can so many more  _ logical _ things. 

Claude is far from perfect. But he’s learning, and that’s  _ enough. _

And their marriage isn’t flawless, but the flaws threaded in are perfect for them, and so easy to cure. 

The world churning around them is imperfect. The winds, the sun,  _ none of it _ is ideal, with Faerghus’s eternal chill.

But it’s enough. It’s all enough.

Claude’s smirks have even leveled into grins, these days.

Even  _ this  _ day, which he spends as though he’s strapped to his chair, bowing over his desk and trying not to complain at the boredom of doing one thing for so long, even as Dimitri slashes glances over at him from across the room, while pouring over his own work, and chuckles. Dimitri is so  _ good  _ at being a king.

Claude, on the other hand, is a mediocre king at best, but a master at making decisions. He snaps a decision right now, as the last year reels through his head.

He brushes aside the document he’d been penning, in favor of a blank sheet of paper, which he heads with the date. 

And his scrawl is rushed as he doodles words across the paper, barely calculating them, just this once, because he’s spent plenty a night wondering what he would write when the time came for him to do so, and here it is,  _ here’s the time,  _ and he better not waste it:

With a swerve of his pen, he begins:

_ Father. _

_ This is the last letter I will ever send you. These are the final words of mine I will ever, ever allow you to experience. I think we can both agree you’re not exactly deserving. _

_ No, no, now’s not the time for spite. I am letting go of the spite. _

_ That’s what I wanted to inform you, actually. That I am letting go of lots of things. Like spite. Like secrets. Like sadness, even though that always manages to foam in at the worst times, doesn’t it? Sadness comes in floods, though--unavoidable, unpreventable. What’s preventable is secrets. _

_ You’ve shoved me into plenty of corners. You’ve made me patch together quite a few hasty thoughts--regrettable thoughts. One time, upon speaking to you, I swore I would spend the rest of my life seething lies like some kind of serpent. _

_ But I’m not a serpent, obviously. I’m a human being, a man. A king. It’s taken me way too long to come to this realization.  _

_ I am a human being. _

_ I am Claude von Riegan-Blaiddyd. I’m not sure you know that I’d decided to clip my lovely, beautiful, flawless, radiant, kind, luminous husband’s surname to mine, though I have. And it means more to me than yours, or mine, or anyone else’s. _

_ Well, that was quite the tangent. Allow me to reach my point. _

_ I told you, I’m scrapping spite, tossing it aside, because isn’t spite a waste of energy I could use to kiss my amazing, phenomenal, totally-kissable husband? (Yes, my husband, who you called deranged that last time; you may have called him something worse, but you were puffing lies and stupid generalizations that whole time. He’s perfect. I love him. I love Fodlan.) _

_ I told you, I’m scratching out secrets, and sadness, when it can be prevented. _

_ And you know what? I think that means blotting you out too. _

_ This letter, it’s picked at my mind for months. I knew it had to happen: I mean, I knew I wanted to make the distance official somehow, but...it’s a little hard, to usher in these words, even though you’re my father, I guess. So here it is. Here’s a declaration: _

_ I’m done. If you send me a letter in response, I’ll trash it. If you want another meeting, I’ll say no, because, someday, I will be your little heir, because Almyra and Fodlan will be one, the second I can pull it off. I think we both know who my only obstacle is--it’s not the mountains, by the way. Never the mountains, but the beast on their other side. _

_ So don’t waste your time spiting me, okay? You’ll get no satisfaction. _

_ And don’t waste time mourning the son you could have had. You didn’t have him. But you have Mother--and I hope that will be enough. I hope you two love each other to pieces, as you always have. Because you deserve to have someone, just like I do. _

_ It’s just something all humans should have: love. Even if it’s not from their fathers. _

_ Okay, I think I got my point across. Don’t respond to this. I love you, I hate you. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. I think I definitely love having a shot at being happy with my sunshine, with my liberty, more than I could ever love you or anyone who isn’t Dimitri. _

_ Sorry if this doesn’t come across as polite. It wasn’t supposed to. _

_ But thank you, I guess. You’re the one who shattered my walls. You’re the one who pushed me to confess everything to Dimitri. You’re the one who opened the gate to the best days of my life, which are these days, by the way. You may not have meant to obliterate these gates so cleanly, but you did. And if I love the man that wrecked my childhood and my head for any reason, then I love you for that. _

_ It’s complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. _

_ This is goodbye, Father. This is forever goodbye. _

_ Until Dimitri and I reach Almyra, of course, and give the people the rulers they need. Until we wash the streets clean of discrimination, until we clear away every flyaway thorn to pave a path of something like...something like tolerance. _

_ The last thing I’ll be wishing you is goodbye, once we get there! We’ll be in a country together! You’ll be bowing to Dimitri!  _

_ This is exciting to even consider. And we’re getting there, Dimitri and I--we are. We’re growing every day. I think we could tear through Fodlan’s Throat by harnessing our love, at this point. This love...it is all we need. _

_ Goodbye, for real this time! I think I’ve said all that needs said. _

_ \-- Claude von Riegan-Blaiddyd, Co-King of Fodlan, Human Being, HUSBAND OF DIMITRI ALEXANDRE RIEGAN-BLAIDDYD _

Claude lets the pen crack down onto the desk, beaming down at his masterpiece. He stuffs it into an envelope--Dimitri’s dozing at his desk, adorable snores pealing through the air like tiny, prancing firecrackers--and trots from the office, depositing the letter in their bedroom, so he’ll wake up and remember to send the mess before he can rethink it.

It should reach his father by the dusk of the week.

Claude idly contemplates how the man will react, then snickers. However it’s received, it will be fine.

_ It will be fine. _

Even thinking those words--being convinced by them, feeling his heart leap and jig in response to them, because they’re honest, and he’s growing so skilled with imperfect honesty in this imperfect world--makes them toll truer still.

And if it is not fine immediately, he will have Dimitri, and liberty, and sunlight on his side, to swaddle him up in whatever fear’s true antithesis is, and to carry him back to the dream world he can see so clearly, glowing in Dimitri’s single eye.

So  _ it will be just fine. _

It will never be perfect, grieves a voice in the back of his mind, and Claude spooks it away with a snort. Nothing will be perfect. He’s learning to expect that, and--better still--to let things remain as imperfect as they’re meant to be.

Dimitri will always have nightmares. Claude will always have nightmares.

Dimitri will always have ghosts. Claude will always have scars, jagged with memories.

Dimitri will always have his Edelgard. Claude will always have his father.

Their every step will always be followed by someone, their every imprint charred at the edges, their every thought fraying upon being knit.

But then, they will always have each other, too. And is that not all they need?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, guys, here it is: the final fic for the week!!!!!!!!!
> 
> (it's ~technically~ 11 p.m. on day seven, so i'm ~technically~ posting this too early, but i couldn't wait!!!)
> 
> this is the first time i've e v e r finished a multi-chap thing i've written. e v e r.
> 
> i've been writing for three years, since i was eleven and remarkably stupid, and here i am. finishing this. i'm so happy right now, i can't even describe it!!
> 
> i hope you all saw this as a fitting ending. i hope you're satisfied with my portrayal of the boys. and i thank each and every one of you for pulling through this with me!! <3 <3 <3


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